welcome to tekzilla bites. feed your tech hunger fast! i'm patrick norton. and this morning googledropped the needle on i/o 2014. google's annual, hey developersand the rest of the world,
Android TV email, here's what's coming from us. first big news is what's now. 1 billion active users permonth up from 538 million at last year's i/o. and whilekitkat, that's the operating
system not the candy, isonly on 15% of the android devices in use right now, it'sno big surprise that google announced the nextversion of android, the l verson of android atgoogle i/o this morning. no cool sugary name yet. i guess licorice,lollipop, lemonhead, and lima bean weren'tawesome enough. but google says android lwill pack in 5,000 new apis. those are thelittle bits that let
developers do a cool thingwith the operating system. the dalvik virtualmachine is going away. this is good in favor ofart, the android run time. that's the core ofthe operating system. google claims art will makeandroid run twice as fast. it will be all kinds ofnative on arm, x86, and mips, offer better garbagecollection, ram management, and new graphicsfeatures for gamers. so better gaming,better performance.
i'm excited. this is a good thing. developers of thenexus 5 or 7 will be able to run lstarting june 26th. i want it on my moto gjust to get notifications i can act on, onthe lock screen. by the way, there's goingto be new easier ways to unlock your phone fromtrusted locations or bluetooth devices.
it all sounds really subtleand really convenient. one less passwordswipe is me getting the tunes playingand the map running in my car that much faster. it's a good thing. something much lesssubtle, well, it is subtle from a design sense. but it's still in your faceis google's material design. "a new consistentdesign approach."
google is going in the oppositedirection of apple it seems. our material is groundedin tactile reality inspired by our study ofpaper and ink, yet open to imagination and magic. grad students art using thesides, it kind of sounds goofy. but it has the potentialto finally deliver quality user interfacesacross all google's products. this promises to inform googleui everywhere, android phones and tablets online, atgmail calendar, google plus,
and i'd expect thetwo new android platforms googleannounced today. the first android tv forsmart tv apps and navigation. the first hardware is goingto come from sony and sharp. voice search to findlive tv or google play movies and showsand android games re-imagined for tv. that's a shot acrossthe bow in microsoft and the xbox andpretty much everything
else on the planet thatconnects to a television. and it sounds likethat it might be more open to workingwith non-google play sources of video. something amazon's fire tv hasutterly, miserably failed at. the second newplatform, android auto. google's goal isvery simple here. car and phoneintegrated seamlessly. natch, right?
google worked withauto manufacturers and other partners to stripdown and refine android to kind of re-envisionhow android will work. google maps made easier. touch targets,simplified interfaces, "the idea of a conversationaloperating system with your car. " like conversational os? well, the idea thatyou're going to talk to your car in asimple and managed way.
you can set reminders whileyou're driving, for example, by talking at yourcar and not taking your hands off the wheel. this is all going to be aboutmaking google now more useful. i'm really curious to see ifchecking traffic and getting directions or justchanging tunes is going to be easyas google has implied. this new operatingsystem, the android auto is going to hit this fall.
and android auto readycars will be around at the end of this year. google suggests youhave a powerful handset since the screen inthe car is really being casted by your phone. hey, while we're talking cars, ilove audio books on road trips. and you can get a freeaudio book from our sponsor, audiblepodcast.com/tekzilla. 150,000 titles to choosefrom, from new york times
best sellers to, hey, ifyou haven't read them yet, a game of thrones, and the restof the song of fire and ice series. me, i'm getting ready tofire up sherlock holmes for the next roadtrip with the boys. the boys, by the way, willnot be getting their hands on the new android wear devices. one's six, one's two. you can pre-order the samsunggear live and lg g watch.
today, yes, getjellyfish warnings, estimates of commute times,music, say ok google. and reply to text messages,tracking calories, kill the fitbit. ask google questions. find out what song is playing. google says, "mostpeople check their phones more than 150 times aday, often to read a text, look at the notification, orget some other single piece
of information. that's a lot of timespent unlocking, swiping, and entering passwords whenyour hands could easily be free handling moreimportant things." i like the concept. but we'll see how it goes. we're also really curiousto see if the moto 360 is as big is it looks when itarrives later this summer. speaking of big, android won.
"smartphones for under $100available in india this fall." android operating system,duh, the operating system will be updated by google,not the local carrier. so is a good thing. hardware reference platformswill be inspected by google to help manufacturesbuild low cost phones for developingmarkets fast. or as google put it,for the next billion. google's thinking global people.
a little smaller,say your living room, chromecast was mentioned. later this year, google's wiiandroid powered hdmi streaming stick will getandroid mirroring. finally, you'll beable to see what's on your phone ortablet on your tv. backdrop, aka, a customizablehome screen is coming. and people will be ableto stream to your cast without having to beon your wi-fi network.
that's kind of cool. other tidbits droppedin a link, the keynote included projectvolta, google's efforts to improve battery lifefor all android devices. the news of thechrome os is going to get the abilityto run native android applications eventually. and drive for work,aka, unlimited storage on google drive for$10 a month, which
is going to includeenterprise friendly controls and tools to help managerstrack employee's work. huh. i don't know how i feelabout being tracked. but i know i wantyou like this video. and if you liked it, do usa favor, hit the button. like it and share itwith your friends. hey, want to see ourreview of a new moto g 4g lte, motorola's update to theawesome and affordable moto g?
i bought one! and i reviewed it. and please, subscribe to getall of our tekzilla advice
at tekzilla.com oryoutube.com/tekzilla, tweet at tekzilla. i am patrick norton. thank you so much for watching.
